


i did not believe in ghosts until i saw my own body

by MMagpieMcCorkle



Category: The Haunting of Hill House (TV 2018)
Genre: Ableist Language, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Body Horror, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Non-Canonical Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-24
Updated: 2019-01-24
Packaged: 2019-10-15 18:34:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17534033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MMagpieMcCorkle/pseuds/MMagpieMcCorkle
Summary: Silence falls over everything in the House.





	i did not believe in ghosts until i saw my own body

**Author's Note:**

> title from Topaz Winter's “battlefield”, from her book _poems for the sound of the sky before thunder_
> 
> a fill for a prompt on my RP blog aghostisawish
> 
> apologies to my RP partners who read it, and apologies to the Discord chat
> 
> ... lmao :')
> 
> anyway not beta-read either i die

Leigh wasn’t answering his calls, always letting them go to voicemail instead, probably deleting them as soon as she heard the first note of Steve’s voice. He understands that. A plethora of wishes, all sprouted and flourished and aged from the same decades-old seed, circle in his head until he’s tired and headachey and heads back to his hotel room.

All he wants to do is sleep all his fuck-ups away. His argument, if it could be called that, with Nell; lying to Leigh; the book; the night Luke and Joey came to his house on a day pass.

And there’s the… _illness_ that’s flaring up. Just a flare-up; it’s not the first time he’s seen his mother, however distorted or silhouetted or hazy or— she was never clear anymore. She’s never been clear since — since when? Since _before_ the House? But no, that was unfair, and it was the mold that did her in. That made her— made her die. Smashed the vanity mirror with the mold he painted over but he didn’t know, did he, he didn’t know and thought it was anything but a genuine threat—

He huffs into his pillow, his head turned to the side with one eye open, watching the red haze of his mother in the corner. Why is she in red? Does the mind put together symbols when nothing makes sense? The Red Room becomes a red mother. Sounds like a load of horseshit: the mind is nonsense and any “meaning” is straw-grabbing.

He needs real sleep, to recharge and be able to think instead of drowning in guilt and dread. Because Leigh will leave him, and it’d be better for her to do that, all the years he’s made her waste with him when he couldn’t give what they both wanted. Just as well, because this is a sign of the future and the future will repeat or rhyme with the past and he can’t put that on his kids, his never-to-be-kids. Even if he’d had the chance, even if he tried to avoid repetition he would’ve done it anyway.

Steve falls asleep against his own body’s alarm: his red mother is coming closer.

* * *

 

Spluttering awake at midnight, Steve sees that the lights are off like someone had flicked the switch for him. He knew they were on when he’d collapsed on the bed but now they weren’t so he must’ve, at some point during the evening, gotten up and done that himself, or one of the cleaning staff saw him and turned the light out. Do they do that? Did he turn it off? Was he so out of it that he doesn’t remember? Probably, yes, he’s often on autopilot these days. These days?

There’s a dip in the bed so real he forgets his scepticism. A hand in his hair and a little hum of a tune he can’t quite remember. Well-kept nails scraping just so against his scalp that makes his skin turn to goosebumps.

When he dares to turn, he doesn’t need the light when the moonlight from out his hotel window shines in just so and illuminates the black mold that’s riddled his mother’s face.

      **“Stevie, my love,”**

his mother says, her mouth moving abnormally like her jaw is fractured, as she tightens her grip on his hair like a vice,

      **“come home.”**

A cry and wrenching free and he tumbles out of bed, smacking his head against the bedside table, landing hard on bristly blue-green carpet.

The lights are on now. There are tears in Stevie’s eyes and he can’t tell if it’s from grief or fear or dread or the pain of all-too-real fingers that had threatened to rip his scalp off if he did not come home.

* * *

 

He’s not going to die. That’s not his plan, no, he just needs to see the House and understand. Confronting the past and the House, for it _is_ only a house, just a building of neat bricks and walls, would do him some good. Not as much good as, say, seeing a doctor and seeking treatment, but it’ll do for now until he does.

But what is there to _understand_? Unsure of his own reasoning but gunning for it anyway.

The chain is easy to do away with and he should probably find a proper way of keeping this place closed ( because he’s not calling _Dad_ to do it, no way — all the way in fucking _Florida_? no ). The House, once he’s out of the car, doesn’t look any different since that last night, when Dad had said _that’s not your mother_. If Dad saw him now, would he say _that’s not my son_? No relatives if you’re fucking **crazy** — if you’re **ill**.

_What do you need to see, Stevie?_

Like the lights, he doesn’t remember the short trek over the overgrowth of the garden to the door, or opening it up ( no locks on that, either ), just autopiloted movement and yeah, he should see a doctor at some point even if autopilot mode is normal for normal people. Just nothing but the dark House and it’s shadows.

Then there’s a whisper of his name — _Stevie, my love, come home_ — and he turns and then he turns again and there’s **_light_**. The foyer is lit like it used to be before bedtime and it shouldn’t be because the electricity was cut off ( was it? Dad wouldn’t waste that kind of money on this place ) but it’s all on anyway.

More whispering, conspiratorial and familiar and young, and he follows the sounds, sticking to the walls while his heart thunders against his ribcage, while his mind screams to run anywhere but here, anywhere but here, _anywhere but **here** , Stevie, what were you thinking!_ But he has to see it through. He has to see it through.

They’re all at the dinner table, crowded round, all casual and cosy and comfortable that it makes Steve’s heart ache. Leigh, his beautiful, wonderful wife sees him first and beams at him like she hasn’t done since sometime before the truth spilled out of him. She’s the first to collect him in her arms, and he’s missed her so much, been wanting to fix this rift he’d put between them and made a chasm, so he wraps around her just the same, his breath coming in short staccato gasps as she soothes him. God, but he doesn’t deserve it. He doesn’t deserve it when his siblings and his dad gather around him, enveloping him in warmth he doesn’t deserve.

_It’s not real! It’s not **real**! It’s not **REAL**!_

But they’re so **warm**. And they’re telling him they understand – about the book, about the money, about his struggling with distinguishing reality from a wish. This last — this last thing they tell him, that Nellie tells him, breaks him, breath becoming spluttered cries as his legs threaten to give out beneath him. Because he has been fearing the worst, that his mind was going ( and it must be, because he’s here and they shouldn’t be and it doesn’t make any sense— ), and he’d— he’d wanted it _fixed_ , not to burden his family but hearing it being acknowledged, especially by his own younger siblings who had suffered more than him—

“It’s not a competition, Stevie, you know that,” Nellie says.

—it’s not something he wants to admit to wanting.

“We love you, Steven. We never stopped loving you.”

* * *

 

“We’re taking the party upstairs,” Shirley says, nudging him in the side like when she used to when they were in college. Kevin is already herding the kids up the shaky-looking metal steps of the spiral steps, followed by Luke and Theo and Dad and Leigh. Nell is hanging back with Arthur, waiting to see if Steve will follow them up. He’s wary, of course he’s wary, look at the steps—

“OK,” he says, trusting them when he shouldn’t. He follows them — Shirley, Arthur, Nellie, him.

His phone rings at the top step, showing the time to be three minutes past midnight. Wow, that’s past the kids’ bedtime. The contact’s name is Nell. He blinks, rubs his eyes, because that can’t be right ( but it is ), because Nellie’s just in front of him — except they’ve all disappeared, and what was lit by wall lights is now dark and dusty and **_cold_**. His breath shudders as he answers the phone: “Nellie?”

“ _Steve—_ ” She sounds just as out of breath.

“Nellie, is that you? Where are you?” He grips the railing, keeping his eye on the archway leading into the deeper dark, fearing what he knew was coming.

“ _It—yes, I’m at home—? Steve, I know— I know it’s late—_ ”

“I love you Nellie, you know that?” He has to let her know, and he only looks to the railing for a second, glancing to gauge how far a way from the stair case he is now, _only a second—_

“ _Steve—_ ” Nell tries to get a word in edgeways just as Mom appears in front of him, her hand gently gripping his jaw to make him look at her, mold and milky eyes and all. If Nellie says anything else, he doesn’t hear it, only his mother’s words.

      **“Welcome home, my love.”**

He’s no longer gripping the railing, or his phone: the phone drops to the floor of the balcony, clattering, clattering to the floor below, shattering and distorting the connection the House allows for this moment, and his mother pushes him backwards. The last thing he hears is the fractured and frantic, “ _Steve! Steve are you there—?_ ” from the shattered phone as his head hits the floor below.

Silence falls over everything in the House.


End file.
